A TEENAGER died when he jumped off a station platform, an inquest heard.

A TEENAGER died when he jumped off a station platform, an inquest heard.

Alex Eaton, 18, of Nantwich Road, Wrenbury, was killed when he was hit by a train at the village's railway station.

The hearing was told he had made two previous attempts on his life, and became reclusive and withdrawn after his brother's death.

Horrified train driver Mary Lakes, from Cardiff, wept in recounting how she frantically beeped her horn expecting him to move, but he stood, arms slightly raised, waiting for the impact.

She was heading towards Manchester at 3.15pm on September 23 last year when the train struck Alex at 90mph. She said: 'Even if I had put the brakes on the moment I had seen him there was no way I was stopping. He was facing me and he was looking. He knew a train was coming because the gates had come down.'

Alex's distraught father, Michael Eaton told the hearing that his son never got over the death of his other son, David, who died from epilepsy in 1988.

He said: 'It seemed to affect him more and more as time went on after his brother's death.

'He used to play football, do athletics for school and play music in the band. He seemed to spend more and more time talking to friends on the internet. He was even talking to local friends on the internet rather than going out to see them.'

Cheshire coroner Nicholas Rheinberg said: 'It takes half a mile to stop a train going at that speed and there is no way the train was going to stop in time.'

The jury at Warrington Town Hall unanimously concluded that Alex took his own life whilst the balance of his mind was disturbed.